Naomi Jaffe
Naomi Esther Jaffe is an American activist and feminist. She is former undergraduate student of Herbert Marcuse and member of the Weather Underground Organization. Jaffe was recently the Executive Director of Holding Our Own, a multiracial foundation for women.
Early life
Jaffe was born in upstate New York on a small family farm run by her Jewish parents. Her father, Abe Jaffe, was a poultry farmer and her mother, Sadie Bakst Jaffe, was an elementary school teacher. Her brother, Bernard, was a musician.As a child, she was influenced by her Communist relatives. Their influence was reflected in her later revolutionary involvement. After high school, she went on to attend Brandeis University and studied Marxism in a few classes with the professor and political theorist Herbert Marcuse.
Students for a Democratic Society
After receiving her undergraduate degree Jaffe founded a chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society at The New School for Social Research where she was pursuing her graduate degree in sociology. During graduate school, she formed a friendship with future Weatherman, David Gilbert. While in the SDS, Jaffe worked for the independent publication New Left Notes and published an article about equal rights for women called "The Look Is You" coauthored with Bernardine Dohrn.Jaffe, a known member of the group Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, participated in the 1969 demonstrations at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. The demonstrations were held to speak out against the consumer driven oppression of women, and to say that the Miss America Pageant perpetuated false stereotypes about the capabilities of women. In 1969, as a member and leading feminist of the SDS, Jaffe traveled with a group of people to Hanoi to talk to Vietnamese students and others about the U.S. antiwar movement.
Weathermen
In 1969, the SDS was heading in a more radical direction and Jaffe became one of the founding members of the Weatherman Organization, yet never became a leader. Jaffe joined the Weather Underground because the group believed in the self-determination of African American people; that they should have a revolution of their own without the total involvement of white middle class people. She also joined because the group was radically anti-racist and anti-imperialist. As quoted by historian Dan Berger, Jaffe says the Weather Underground was "the most vital show in town." The organization was also aligned with her Marxist ideals. To join she had to set aside her feminist convictions, yet she always believed that the WUO should have focused more on women's liberation.In September 1969, she participated in "jailbreaks", actions in which high school students were encouraged to leave class and run through the halls as though they were being freed from the prison that was their school. This action was to gain support for the "Days of Rage" also called the National Action. She and 25 other Weatherwomen, including Cathy Wilkerson, were arrested in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for that act. From October 8–11, 1969 Jaffe participated in the "Days of Rage" in Chicago where members of the WUO, after having taken control of the SDS, ran through the streets smashing windows and causing chaos, she was arrested on October 11 for battery and resisting arrest. In 1970, Jaffe was indicted in Detroit, Michigan, for her participation in the 1969 War Council held in Flint, Michigan, the final public meeting of the Weatherman-controlled SDS before the dissolution of the SDS in January 1970. 13 people were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bombings and murders, however, these charges were dropped in 1973.